Voices of moderation on Burmese Facebook

Much has been said of the abundance of hate posts on Burmese language Facebook nodes. While this is a disturbing trend, moderate voices are not hard to find. Unfortunately, multimedia advocating peace and tolerance is less likely to make news, both in Burma and globally. Below are some samples of recent posts circulating on Burmese Facebook accounts that attempt to counter the violent and divisive rhetoric.

This cartoon includes the declaration:

‘All of us love our country. Let’s prevent the problems that are happening. Don’t make disagreements out of different beliefs. Leave people who want to go back to an earlier era so we will move on.’

This is a joint announcement from Buddhist and Muslim youth groups wanting peace. It is in response to leaflets being distributed in Yangon attempting to incite religious violence. The concluding paragraph calls for unity: ‘No matter who divides us, we will not be separated. We will always be united.’ They go on to urge people to take responsibility and prevent violence from happening in the community.

This is a joint statement from a Yangon-based group of monks and a national Burmese Islamic organisation, calling for a peaceful solution to the conflict. They make three points:

‘1. Based on the conflict currently happening in some parts of Rakhine State, the populace is worried and saddened by the suffering of innocent people.

2. We wish that anyone who acts, speaks and writes does so for peace.

3. Buddhists and Muslims should act according to the teachings of your respective religions and we beg you to join and work together to solve the problem.’

In contrast to the religious outpourings, the sectarian violence has also led some to advocate for secularism, as demonstrated by the pie chart above.

The above words from the prominent Buddhist monk and prolific writer U Zawtika contains some thoughts on forgiveness important at this time:

‘Forgiving is not about winning. Its not about losing. Its not about getting the upper hand. Its not about being humiliated. Forgiving liberates you. It puts your mind at peace. Forgiving is not to make one look good or sound good to people around you. It is work to actually liberate ourselves and gain peace.’

A nugget from Ghandi

Some welcome anti-racist slogans:

And finally, a warning to Burmese Facebook users:

Dave Gilbert and Violet Cho are students at the Australian National University

This post is a blow to the biased article from Sai Latt. You did not say much, but silence probably is the best sign to counter reversed racism from Sai Latt. I was frustrated at the Rohingya propaganda machine that is sweeping sympathy from international media, while in Maungdaw, they are burning down the Arakanese villages unscrupulously. In sittwe, Arakanese fought back and attempted to safeguard their homes and lives, thus ending up in exchange of affairs. They could do so because of the equal representation of population. Living in a Muslim majority area is a precarious decision to make. No offence!

I wonder why Muslims did not stay tolerant of the Taungup incident, which obviously is a huge mistake the Arakanese people did (or people even say the military did that). No matter what, I blamed the Arakanese for that act. Why did not Muslims show tolerance and take advantage of that Arakanese savagery to promote their own plight. But they retaliated with might and violence in another part of the state against innocent Arakanese. That is seeking an eye for an eye; which is a shame and which is an act that left them without any sympathy from the Burmese majority.

Well done, NM. Sai Latt’s piece was near enough as inflammatory as any material on Facebook and blogs he gleaned from , drawing the flak he deserved. If he did it on the principle of any publicity is good publicity he got that right.

Biases are becoming the norm rather than exception on journalism as it is easy to write a politically correct piece and name it as balanced essay, just blame someone racist, named it intolerance, that is it. Your job as a journalist is secured for a month and off you go to a pub.
Why will you care about poor bastards in bad neighbourhoods, all you care is a story and it is easier and safer to write Burmese Bad Rohingya are spotless saints story. Someone raised JI or Al Queda trained Rohingyas, if someone states a fact that they are part of the problem too, then use another trick, tag a label Islamophobia. And suck up Edward Said a bit claiming you are an orientalist too without even knowing Said was an Arab intellectual who white washed the Turks and Arabs’ atrocities. But sucking up Said is easier and safer than praising anti-Said guys, neo-cons. How convenient the world has become. So journalists and academics go easy path, that is follow the templates.

But the same people will never share with their so called fake victims
whom they are protecting online. They will vote with their feet, their wallets, selling off homes and running away to good neighbourhoods.

Enter the world of hypocrisy. Enjoy the era of faking victims and fabricated photos, on Kaladan (Rohingyar web site funded by
Open Society Soros’ dollars), they reused the grotique pictures
of Vietnamese victims in Milai masscare as Rohingyas. Another invader’s tools.

But the real interesting stories are maggots among us. I have seen similar people mostly online, they stay neutral, that is fine, you need balls to go against Rohingyar terrorists. But staying neutral does not mean they have to suck them up. Some of our maggots shout Long live Rohingya. Pathetic suckers. But the question is that will they share neighbourhood with them. I doubt! From the comfort of air-condition and heater, wine or whiskey or wee (as if they do not drink wine or whiskey, I assume they enjoy wee). They will write super-liberal Pollyanna stories, how much they care for them.

I wished why do not they let their wives, sisters, nieces and daughters volunteer there among their people without the protection from us, patriots. They will not last more than 5 minutes.

A “moderate voice advocating peace and tolerance” is what I heard from my one Facebook friend too (active in open source programming community), who has Muslim-Buddhist parents, who she pointed out, have always found ways to bridge their differences.

In Yangon had so many friends of mixed ethnicity (Karen, Burmese, Shan, Chin…) but one occasionally encounters some pretty strident racist undertones. I’ll never forget the tirade of one older Karen doctor and UN volunteer (over a beer next to Mahabandula park, feelings of guilt here since I always sensed beer was considered a very sinful activity by the Burmese Buddhists I knew) who claimed that Aung-San used the metaphor of “breaking the hymen of a virgin” in his public speeches and this was ipso facto evidence that he was no good and going further claiming that such “immoral” metaphoric language was common in the Burmese language that this meant that all Burmese were no good. I just point it out as a curiosity and this is perhaps the wrong time to be studying racist beliefs (or maybe it is the right time if you want to end them). Just hope the Arakan border region does not become another Southern Thailand. 🙂

First time I’ve heard of that alleged Aung San metaphor. What is common knowledge however relates to discipline and self reliance warning the people that the alternative would be a whore of a country (hpar naingan) in one of his more famous speeches.

The Burmese language as you know does not want in robustness or ribaldry where necessary and will rise up to the challenge , some examples of which you may have seen in a recent thread on elephant metaphors. But do we practise phallic worship? Some travel writer seemed to think so when his imagination ran off a tangent when he saw the gate signs in gold and vermilion on teak pillars with ‘phallic tops’ in front of the old city wall in Mandalay. Some imagination.

I want to ask Dave and Violent to elaborate on the following questions.
1) When did those moderation voices started. Did they exist long before? The reason I ask is, at least four examples you presented in this post appeared only in June 2012 when things got too bad. e.g. joint statement from a Yangon-based group of monks and a national Burmese Islamic organisation, was dated June 10. The facebook text, “Don’t get people dead because of your facebook account” is only a few days old. Similarly, the joint statement between buddhist and Muslim youth groups appeared in June, only after a threat letter appeared to attack mosques on June 15.

2) How many percentage of “moderation voices” exist? Are are a lot of people proactively telling people to stop the racist campaign? As far as I observe, people talking about peace can be counted, but anti-rohingyas people and posts are too many and it is impossible to count.

That spelling mistake presumably was accidental? It’s too close to the subject!

Whatever those authors’ personal convictions or their public pronouncements are not really relevant. Their action has been conciliatory and effect calming.

The Burmese posts on all sites have been typically virulent about just about everything for as long as there was access. Those “kill the kalars” are just the mild end. There is equal bile at websites between Aung San Suu Kyi worshippers and knockers as well.

They are good for quotes as in “bitch fights” but the realty is that there aren’t really people going around doing harm or indeed going at all. They simply sit at their computers. Or the rich ones, iPAD’s. People actively doing harm are not really sitting down to get instructions from the web loonies.

There was a recent post in Burmese about the Burmese habitually being in fight with anybody, everybody and all. But when someone come along and make a big deal out of it, the real problem can ensue. So please be careful to base these remarks for future incitement. The writers most likely would have moved on and would not remember why it was written by the time people start making a huge deal.

Again the Burmese language comments are rife with these for long time. It certainly does not make it right or desirable, but it also does not mean as dangerous as it sounds.

Please say “stop them” If you want which is good thing to do but don’t magnify them like all those journalists and academics. Please.

Moe Aung: “The Burmese language as you know does not want in robustness or ribaldry where necessary and will rise up to the challenge , some examples of which you may have seen in a recent thread on elephant metaphors.”

That is probably it. Karen’s derive a lot of their culture from American protestant missionaries as do the Chins and there is probably low tolerance for ribaldry. (Would be interesting to study Rohingya culture in more detail. Once had a Rohingya as bestfriend and have many fond memories of Rohingya community in Mae Sot, very hospitable people, my friend’s second cousin was married to a Karen with two kids and there was even a Karen Muslim village near Mae Sot, he claimed).

When you mentioned “ribaldry” in Burmese language, I thought of Shakespeare and my favourite Gargantua_and_Pantagruel that are accepted classics but full of some pretty racy stuff. My question for you is whether you have encountered similar “ribaldry” in Burmese literature or folk lit? Jogging my memory but can’t recall anything but never read any pre-Konbaung lit. What about Burma’s “Shakespeare” U Pon Nya? Did he engage in ribaldry?

Ribaldry in modern Burmese lit always seems to be thoroughly clothed with moralizing, such as U Nu’s play Thaka Ala composed before the elections in 1962 with the communist teacher making amorous advances on his female student and the Interior Minister’s concubine whining for more attention (he found her in Yangon’s old redlight district of the 1950s near Bohtataung pagoda) and Thein Pe Myint’s The Modern Monk with the monk and nun dancing close together for which he had to apologize publicly though he did not condone it or actor’s U Kyaw Hein’s numerous romantic moments with honey bee pollinating flowers spliced in by Burmese censors to hide.

[Just saw Vaginagate this week in the US which has the religious dimension but no ethnic dimension. Throw in religious and ethnic differences and maybe you get racist stereotypes forming, hatred and potential for conflict.]

The academics got it right. The initial reaction revealed it all. Later moderate voice form the Buddhist sides are “damange control” as they realzed that their true feelings about the Rohingyas has been revealed to the world. The world, assuming that “Buddhist equals peaceful people ” is no longer fooled.

If you accuse Edward Said ( a diseased Palestinian and hence the real descendant of origian Jews of Judea than the converted jews from Europe – see a book by Israeli historian from Tel Aviv university on who the Palestinians are) who was a University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, shouldn’t you also say something about the whitewashing of Israeli atrocities by the world’s media?

if anyone is curious why I, a non Rohingya, is spending time writing this, it’s because after learning their sufferings, my conscience won’t allow me to keep quiet about what I know about the orchestrated victimization of the Rohingyas.

Don’t pigeonhole Violet Cho asking whether she supports this or that. She has already asked to see things under historical, political, cultural, social light ratrher than race since the issue in arakan is a very complex issue. She is fully aware that those Rohingyas are not recent immigrants of 20th century from Bengal.

Sorry, Jon. My response to you got drowned out by Mandy/Menhdi’s diarrhoeal flow I reckon.

No scholar of Bur. Lit. me. But Ko Htay in his comment #17 of the aforementioned thread has kindly given us a taste of U Ponnya’s no holds barred wit regardless of the royal personage involved, King Mindon’s brother Kanaung, in his face as it were.

My thanks also to the link he provided to Bhamo Sayadaw notorious for his brutal directness in the rhyming notes he was known to drop (rather like poison pen letters). An abbot and royal teacher, he was once banished by King Mindon for one of his misdemeanors, but not on the occasion he executed a perfect put down on the king himself. No pulling punches this bolshie monk.

[…] but also gives the government a handy excuse down the road to roll back its reforms. Fortunately, voices of moderation and tolerance have emerged to counteract some of the more inflammatory claims that have appeared on the […]

[…] but also gives the government a handy excuse down the road to roll back its reforms. Fortunately, voices of moderation and tolerance have emerged to counteract some of the more inflammatory claims that have appeared on the […]